Friends

Horse Stable and Riding Academy

A proper little riding school with two lovely horses, if you can look past the sticker price.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 42688 · 2026

Pieces750

Minifigs3

Year2026

Set number42688

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The verdict

This is Friends doing what Friends does best, and the horses are the reason to buy it.

Coco, the dark orange horse with a raised front leg and printed detail, has real personality, and the whole riding-lesson setup with jumps and a whiteboard feels like a place you could actually play in. My honest reservation is the price. At ninety dollars for 735 parts it asks more than last year's Pony Ranch did for a similar count and two ponies, so you are paying a premium for the newness. If a horse-obsessed kid is the audience, it lands beautifully.

Best for: Horse-mad kids who want a full riding-lesson world, not just a stable

The full review

What it is

I have a soft spot for the horse sets in the Friends line, and this one leans right into that. You get a riding academy rather than just a barn, so there are showjumping jumps, a whiteboard for lessons, trophies on display, hay boxes, a wheelbarrow and a little puppy trotting around underfoot. Liann and Aliya turn up to take their lesson while Cindy, a new instructor character, runs the session. The two horses are the heart of it, and the star is Coco, a dark orange horse posed mid-stride with a raised front leg and printed markings that give her a real sense of motion. The first time I saddled her up with the new blanket, I got that little hit of joy this theme is so good at.

The catch

I will be straight with you about the value, because it is the thing builders keep raising. This is a 735-piece set (750 on the box count) at ninety dollars, and last year's Pony Ranch and Stable had a comparable part count, included two ponies, and cost around twenty dollars less. So you are paying more for a newer set that does not obviously give you more plastic. The building itself is on the modest side too. Because half the footprint is taken up by stalls that sit empty apart from the horses, the actual construction goes quickly and can feel a touch hollow in the middle. There is also a large sticker sheet doing a lot of the decorating, which some people will happily shrug off and others will not.

Who it's for

So who lands where. If there is a horse-loving kid in the picture, this is an easy yes. The play value is high, the horses are lovely, and a riding academy is a more interesting fantasy than a plain stable. If you are an adult builder chasing clever technique or the best dollars-per-brick, this is not the set for that, and you would do better waiting for a sale or looking at the older ranch set secondhand. Buy it for the horses and the play, not for the engineering, and you will not be disappointed.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build is gentle and fast, split across six numbered bags plus a small bag of decorations, with three 8x16 plates and a 10x10 half-circle plate forming the base. It is a friendly afternoon rather than a challenge, which is exactly right for the age seven and up audience. The stalls, the lesson area and the jumps come together without any fuss, and the reward is really in dressing the scene and posing the horses afterward.

The new moulds are the collector-interesting bit. There is a Horse Blanket in medium lavender, brand new, with a 2x2 section that clicks onto the cutout on the horse's back and pin holes down each side for attaching decorations. You also get a tiny Stetson hat in dark pink (with a spare, thankfully), and the Coco horse itself in dark orange with a raised leg and fresh printing. None of it is going to reshape your parts bin, but the recolours and the printed horse are the pieces you will remember, and they are the reason this set feels special rather than routine.

Fun facts

01The set introduces three brand-new moulds: a medium lavender horse blanket, a dark pink tiny Stetson hat, and the dark orange horse Coco with a raised front leg and printing.
02Cindy, the riding instructor, is a new Friends character, joining regular crew members Liann and Aliya for the lessons.
03The horse blanket attaches with a 2x2 stud connection to a matching cutout on the horse's back and has three pin holes on each side for adding accessories.
04It arrives with two instruction books and a large sticker sheet, and launched at 89.99 dollars / 69.99 pounds / 79.99 euros in January 2026.